'Well,--eighty thousand. It's impossible to suppose that such a man as Melmotte shouldn't be able to raise eighty thousand pounds.'
'Why don't he do it then?' asked Dolly.
All this was very unpleasant and made the club less social than it used to be in old days. There was an attempt that night to get up a game of cards; but Nidderdale would not play because he was offended with Dolly Longestaffe; and Miles Grendall was away in the country,--a fugitive from the face of Melmotte, and Carbury was in hiding at home with his countenance from top to bottom supported by plasters, and Montague in these days never went to the club. At the present moment he was again in Liverpool, having been summoned thither by Mr Ramsbottom. 'By George,' said Dolly, as he filled another pipe and ordered more brandy and water, 'I think everything is going to come to an end. I do indeed. I never heard of such a thing before as a man being done in this way. And then Vossner has gone off, and it seems everybody is to pay just what he says they owed him. And now one can't even get up a game of cards. I feel as though there were no good in hoping that things would ever come right again.'
The opinion of the club was a good deal divided as to the matter in dispute between Lord Nidderdale and Dolly Longestaffe. It was admitted by some to be 'very fishy.' If Melmotte were so great a man why didn't he pay the money, and why should he have mortgaged the property before it was really his own? But the majority of the men thought that Dolly was wrong. As to the signature of the letter, Dolly was a man who would naturally be quite unable to say what he had and what he had not signed. And then, even into the Beargarden there had filtered, through the outer world, a feeling that people were not now bound to be so punctilious in the paying of money as they were a few years since. No doubt it suited Melmotte to make use of the money, and therefore,--as he had succeeded in getting the property into his hands,--he did make use of it. But it would be forthcoming sooner or later! In this way of looking at the matter the Beargarden followed the world at large. The world at large, in spite of the terrible falling-off at the Emperor of China's dinner, in spite of all the rumours, in spite of the ruinous depreciation of the Mexican Railway stock, and of the undoubted fact that Dolly Longestaffe had not received his money, was inclined to think that Melmotte would 'pull through.'